Ecclesiastical Knights

The Military Orders in Castile, 1150-1330

Sam Zeno Conedera, S.J.

Publication Year: 2015

“Warrior monks”—the misnomer for the Iberian military orders that emerged on the frontiers of Europe in the twelfth century—have long fascinated general readers and professional historians alike. Proposing “ecclesiastical knights” as a more accurate name and conceptual model—warriors animated by ideals and spiritual currents endorsed by the church hierarchy—author Sam Zeno Conedera presents a groundbreaking study of how these orders brought the seemingly incongruous combination of monastic devotion and the practice of warfare into a single way of life.Providing a detailed study of the military-religious vocation as it was lived out in the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara in Leon-Castile during the first century, Ecclesiastical Knights provides a valuable window into medieval Iberia. Filling a gap in the historiography of the medieval military orders, Conedera defines, categorizes, and explains these orders, from their foundations until their spiritual decline in the early fourteenth century, arguing that that the best way to understand their spirituality is as a particular kind of consecrated knighthood.Because these Iberian military orders were belligerents in the Reconquest, Ecclesiastical Knights informs important discussions about the relations between Western Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages. Conedera examines how the military orders fit into the religious landscape of medieval Europe through the prism of knighthood, and how their unique conceptual character informed the orders and spiritual self-perception.The religious observances of all three orders were remarkably alike, except that the Cistercian-affiliated orders were more demanding and their members could not marry. Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara shared the same essential mission and purpose: the defense and expansion of Christendom understood as an act of charity, expressed primarily through fighting and secondarily through the care of the sick and the ransoming of captives. Their prayers were simple and their penances were aimed at knightly vices and the preservation of military discipline. Above all, the orders valued obedience. They never drank from the deep wellsprings of monasticism, nor were they ever meant to.Offering an entirely fresh perspective on two difficult and closely related problems concerning the military orders—namely, definition and spirituality—author Sam Zeno Conedera illuminates the religious life of the orders, previously eclipsed by their military activities.

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Preface

One day, while I was doing research for this book, my eyes fell upon these
lines from Maurice Keen’s classic work on chivalry:

In the crusading context, the military orders—the Temple, the Hospital
and the Teutonic and Spanish orders—came to be just that, the strong
right arm of the militant church. Their organisation, as reflected in their
rules of life, represented a real fusion of ecclesiastical...

Abbreviations

Introduction: Warrior Monks?

The Iberian military orders’ way of life from the twelfth to the
early fourteenth centuries represented the consecration of
knighthood to God in accordance with the ideals of the Gregorian
Reform and the crusading movement, with the help of
practices and norms taken from the monastic tradition. The exercise of
arms and its exigencies were always primary in this hybrid way of life and
gave prior form to the selection and ordering of the monastic elements....

1. Foundations

Walter Map, writing in the last decades of the twelfth century,
observed, “It is in the period of this century that
the Templars, the Hospitallers in Jerusalem, the Knights
called of the Sword in Spain, from whom our discourse
took its departure earlier, have grown to the zenith of their strength.”2 This
remark, made almost offhandedly amid Map’s trenchant commentary on...

2. Interior Castle: The Orders' Religious Observance

I have argued that the three Iberian orders, despite their various origins,
were all instantiations of ecclesiastical knighthood because of the way that
the exercise of arms gave prior form to their way of life. If this claim is
true, it must be evident in the orders’ internal structure and organization.
Blas Casado Quintanilla has called attention to Calatrava’s reluctance to refer
to itself as an “order.” Much more common, at least for the first forty...

3. Ad Extra: The Orders' Mission in the World

The continuator of Lucas of Túy’s Chronicon mundi says that Pelayo
Pérez Correa, the famous master of Santiago, was so greatly
feared that Muslim parents used his name to stop their children
from crying.2 Fighting was indeed the military orders’ principal
activity, whereas the care of the sick and the ransoming of captives were
significant but subordinate aspects of their mission. A key to understanding...

4. Brothers in Arms: The Orders' Relations with One Another

When representatives of Santiago, Calatrava, the Temple,
and the Hospital gathered in 1224 to establish a pact of
mutual cooperation, they stated their reason for doing so
in the following terms: “But let it be known that we make
this pact so that there might be a bond of greater love between us.”2 In the
prevoius chapter, I argued that the organizing principle behind the military...

Conclusion

By now it is possible to sketch a general picture of ecclesiastical
knighthood as instantiated in the Iberian military orders. They
owed their existence to the confluence of factors both universal
and local: the emergence of crusading and the pursuit of the Reconquest;
the foundation and growth of the Temple and the Hospital; the
development of Iberian military-religious confraternities; and the desires,...

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